


End of Silence (The All Paths Lead to God of Go Remix)

by tuuli



Category: Hikaru no Go
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 15:57:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4227945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuuli/pseuds/tuuli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When two children found an old go board in an attic, the new host of Fujiwara no Sai wasn't what he had expected. There were no yelling matches over go boards, no insei exams and tournaments, no rivalries... and no Hand of God. But in the end, even though it all had been over for a long while, there was a purpose behind everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	End of Silence (The All Paths Lead to God of Go Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flonnebonne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flonnebonne/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Silent Path](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/123909) by Flonnebonne. 
  * In response to a prompt by [flonnebonne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flonnebonne/pseuds/flonnebonne) in the [remixmadness2015](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/remixmadness2015) collection. 



> A couple of things before we get started...  
> 1) I recommend reading the original fic first. It's only a short drabble so it won't take much time.  
> 2) This... kind of got out of hand. It was supposed to be something completely different. I'm not *cough* completely sure if this counts as a remix anymore, or a sequel or something...  
> But as I now wrote it, here it is. I enjoyed writing it, so I hope you'll enjoy it too!

**End of Silence**

There was a voice. A familiar voice, and it was talking to her, but she couldn’t understand the words. This bothered her, for the voice sounded worried, and she didn’t want anyone worrying over her. She would have wanted to tell this person that everything was alright, but her tongue was thick and lifeless in her mouth and she couldn’t make it work. In fact, she wasn’t quite sure if it was her tongue, or some strange soft but chunky object that for whatever reason was in her mouth, sticking to her palate.

If not the tongue, maybe her eyes would work. She fought to open them, and thought she did, but she could see nothing but white. Just when she was about to give up something hovered at the edge of her sight, a blurred, shady form. She couldn’t make it focus, try as she might.

“Grandma?” the voice said. 

She forced her numb, strangely tingling lips open. “I’m okay, it’s okay, I’m okay,” she said – or tried to, for her tongue wasn’t still working.

“What?” the voice asked. And called then, more excitedly, “She’s awake!” but she grew tired of the white light and the form that simply refused to focus, and let her eyes close again.

.

Next time she opened her eyes she saw white again, and stared at it, wondering. She turned her head – and how that little movement made it throb! – and took in the clean white room where she was lying, all alone.

She reached with a shivering hand, and her finger found a button she had known to be there. It took just a moment before hurried steps approached the room and a nurse appeared in the doorway.

“Oh, Moriyama-san, you really are awake!” the nurse exclaimed and hurried to her bed, bending to look at something that was outside of her view. She realized that quite a many tubes left from her arm, and she wondered about them, and even more about the name the nurse had called her, but then the sight of her hand caught her attention. 

“That’s not my hand,” she tried to say with her thick tongue. But the fingers moved when she moved them. And there was the long scratch she had got when they’d been climbing in a tree, she and Hikaru, and she had fallen. _Girls suck at climbing_ , Hikaru had stated instead of asking her if she was alright, and she had bit back her tears and climbed back up, higher than Hikaru.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” the nurse said turning to her, but she said nothing, just stared at her fingers, so wrinkly, as if she had been bathing for a long time. “Here, drink a little, your mouth must be quite dry.” The nurse offered her water from a spout mug. “How do you feel?” she asked.”The doctor is making his rounds soon, but I can call him here now.”

“I’m okay…” she mumbled, her tongue obeying her now better. For a moment she paused, wondering about the strange déjà-vu feeling she was having. “What… happened?”

“You were in a traffic accident,” the nurse told her gently. “It was raining hard, and the car you were in aquaplaned. You got a nasty hit on your head, but you should be okay.”

“Yes…” She remembered that moment she had seen an oncoming car starting to pass the one in front of it, the moment she realized it didn’t have time to get back on its own lane, the deafening screeching when it hit their car, the blood and the pain, and how frightened Sai had been no matter how hard she tried to assure him she was alright…

“How is Kumiko?” she whispered, remembering her friend lying unconscious on the backseat. 

“I’m sorry, who?” the nurse bent closer to her, a frown on her face.

“Kumiko,” she repeated. “She… _she_ hit her head. I… my foot…” She tried to raise her head to look at her feet. They didn’t hurt. She remembered it had hurt so much, but now, there was nothing. She wriggled her toes. No pain. “There was no rain…” she said, confused, and fell silent.

“Oh, _now_ I understand,” the nurse said. “Your daughter told me that you’ve been in a traffic accident before. Say, don’t you remember this one?” 

She stared at the nurse, not quite understanding what she meant. The nurse tried again, “What is the last thing you remember?”

She closed her eyes. She remembered so many things… but which one of them was the last?

“Sai…” she mumbled after a long silence. “The day… he left…”

“I’m sorry?” the nurse said again. She said nothing, and after a moment the nurse stood up. “You should rest now, Moriyama-san. I’ll go to tell the doctor you are awake.”

Akari didn’t hear her. She was already sleeping.

.

When she again woke up she had barely time to realize where she was when someone was hugging her.

“Grandma!”

She blinked, trying to understand what was going on.

“Yui!” a voice chided. “Be careful with your grandmother! You know she isn’t well yet.”

“I’m sorry.” The girl hugging her drew back, smiling, though there were tears in her eyes. “I’m just so happy to see you again, grandma.”

She stared at her, at that face that was at the same time so familiar and so strange, and blinked again. _I can’t be your grandma, I’m no older than you_ , she wanted to say, but something in the girl’s eyes stopped her.

“I’m… happy to see you too,” she whispered, and the sniffing girl hugged her again, this time more gently.

.

It felt to her she had spent ages in the hospital. She assured everyone she was alright and could have very well checked out, but they just smiled and said they would still wait a day or two. Always a day or two more.

She bit back a sigh, sitting on the edge of her bed. How utterly stubborn these doctors could be. It was such a beautiful spring day too, but they didn’t let her go out alone, and right now no one had time to take her.

Someone knocked on the door of her room but, caught in the grumpiness of her mood, she made no reply. Still the door opened. “Grandma?” a voice asked, and she smiled despite herself.

“I’ve told you I’d rather you called me Akari,” she said.

“I’m just not used to it! It feels so weird.” Yui entered the room and sat down next to her. Her tone was complaining, but she was smiling. “How are you today… Akari?”

She smiled and leaned toward the girl, conspiringly. “I’m bored to _death_. Would you not take me out?”

“Of course!” Yui bounced to her feet. “I’ll just get the…”

“No wheelchair!” she exclaimed.

Yui turned to her and gave her a look, hands on her hips. “Okay, _grandma_. If you want me to call you Akari, you will do what I tell you, okay? I’m not taking you anywhere except in the wheelchair.”

She sighed and considered arguing, but decided then it would be fruitless. This girl was even more stubborn than the doctors.

The day was as beautiful as it had seemed through the window glass. She drew a deep breath of the fresh air. “Wonderful,” she said aloud. “I’m so _sick_ of this place. They never let me go anywhere.”

“You know you’re not alright, gra… Akari,” Yui said quietly, pushing her wheelchair to her favorite place in the hospital’s garden. “They’re just looking after you.”

“Whoever asked them to,” she muttered grumpily.

“Mom,” Yui said. “And me. You can blame us.”

They arrived to the little pond full of brightly colored koi, shadowed by a few tactically placed trees that sheltered the place from the hottest sunshine. Yui sat down next to her wheelchair, not on one of the benches but on the grass, as usual.

A moment they sat in silence, the girl watching the fishes, the old woman in the wheelchair the girl.

“You’ve changed your hairdo,” Akari said suddenly.

Yui shot her a smile. “Yeah. Do you like it? …and would you believe dad noticed _nothing_? Unbelievable!”

She laughed. Yui’s hair that had used to cover her shoulder blades was now cut short in a pixie-like style, and there seemed to be some blond highlights too, glistening in the sun. Akari blinked. Somehow she was suddenly reminded of Hikaru. Hikaru as he should have been, and not as that gray-haired old man who had come to visit her. It had been so… awkward. She hadn’t known what to say. And the worst thing was that she had known this really was Hikaru. How could she not recognize him, no matter what he looked like…

She looked down at her hands, old and wrinkled, and frowned.

This… made her head hurt.

Yui was talking. She raised her head, realizing she had missed the beginning of her speech. “…but, you know, I really don’t think I played badly there, whatever they say. Okay, so it didn’t work but it was still a good plan! I tried applying that same trick SAI used in his game against some Korean pro, but I wasn’t good enough to pull it off.” She gave an annoyed sigh. “I need to study his game records more. But I still say it wasn’t a bad game!” She looked up at her with a smile that danced in her eyes. “Want to see?”

She returned the smile. “Of course!” And with a laugh Yui took from her bag the magnetic go board she always had with her, and started replaying the game she had been talking about.

.

Spring passed and turned into summer, and still she was at the hospital. Now they were talking about putting her in a nursing home. Unbe _liev_ able ideas! Where did they get them? And the worst thing was that no one took her side. Not even Yui, or the too old Hikaru. It was so unfair.

Yui, once again sitting with her by the koi pond, watched her apologetically as she complained about this, but said nothing. She fell silent and turned away, quite aware she was sulking, but not really caring.

Yui sighed. “Akari, I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But, you know, you can’t live alone anymore, and we… we can’t…” She swallowed. “I wish you could come to live with us. That’d be great. But you know how busy mom and dad are, and I don’t have time to look after you either, cause…” She fell silent.

“You don’t need to look after me,” Akari said crossly. “Besides, I know you must go to school.” She paused. “…shouldn’t I, too? Hey, maybe I could join your class. Then you could look after me for your heart’s content.”

Yui laughed, a little dryly. “Wouldn’t that be something.” She sat in silence for a moment. “I… was actually going to say that there's something different than school that'll keep me busy… but I don’t know if I want to tell you when you’re so grumpy.”

Akari glanced at her and saw the sly smile on the girl’s lips. She looked away again, but in the end couldn’t resist. “What?”

“Weeeell, I was all excited when I came here and wanted to tell you all about it, but then you started complaining and ruined the mood, so I don’t really…”

She turned to face her fully. “Yui! What is it?”

A grin spread across the girl’s face, reaching almost from ear to ear. “I just passed the pro exam prelims.”

Akari clapped her hands together, all thoughts of nursing homes and the unfairness of it all disappearing. “That’s wonderful! You’ll be a pro!”

Yui laughed, too. “Well, I do need to pass the pro exam, still. But of course, I fully plan to do that. The competition’s pretty tough this year, though. You know that Touya Kisei’s grandson's going to take the exam too?” She grinned again. “I can’t _wait_ to get to play him!”

“And I can’t wait to see that game! You must come to show it to me!”

“Of course! I’ll come straight here when it’s over!”

The two sat there, the grins on their faces each other’s mirror image, as a gentle summer rain started falling. The koi in the pond glided slowly by underneath the surface that was now patterned by tiny circles, but they paid no attention to them anymore as Yui started explaining to Akari all the details of the pro exam.

.

She would have wanted to see what the pond looked like in autumn, but in late summer she was finally moved to a nursing home. It was a nice enough place, she figured. Relatively small, with nice staff and nice residents, and a nice garden (without a koi pond, which was the only serious lack there was.) Still, it was just nice. She sat in her nice room, watching the nice view into the garden, waited, and was bored.

Yui had started her exam, and started it well. After seventeen games she had only two losses. She could make it. _Would_ make it.

She smiled. She had a memory, one of the clearest memories she had, though so difficult to time, of this little girl stopping by her old go board and asking what it was. No one else in her family had ever held any interest in go at all. She had all but forgotten the game…

“Sai…” she muttered to herself. “If you were here to teach her… how great she would be!”

It was so strange to think that the shy little girl of her memories and Yui, this tall, overconfident and somewhat cheeky teenager would be the same person. She wasn’t quite sure how that worked out. But be that how it may, it made her so proud that she had been the one to introduce go to this girl. 

“She _will_ be great,” she went on. “Even without your help, Sai. But how proud you too would have been of her! And, you know, she just about worships you and your games. Thank god I let you play so much NetGo… thank god those games were recorded…”

She heard running steps in the corridor, and a nurse’s chiding call that did nothing to slow the steps. The girl burst into her room, face shining more brightly than ever, and Akari smiled. A loss or a win, it had been a good game. _And that_ , she thought a little wistfully to Sai, _is the only thing that matters, isn’t it? Did I meet you just so I could teach that to this girl?_

Yui took a deep breath. “Touya Akihisa is _amazing!_ ” she exclaimed. “He’s amazing but so am I and we’re gonna be amazing together and _rock this world!_ ” And she raised her hand to high-five her grandmother.


End file.
